Why worry about North Korea’s nuke plant? We’re still paying for a plant we never used!

Could we have become a "nuclear power", or developed our stillborn nuclear capacity into a weapon of mass destruction? Most Filipino taxpayers seem to have forgotten that for the past 18 years, we’ve been paying the US firm of Westinghouse hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly in interest for an over-priced, scandalous nuclear plant that had to be mothballed immediately and was never used.

This is the multibillion dollar Bataan nuclear plant for which us poor suckers were charged more than double the going price at the time, and which had been installed right on top of a geodetic fault in the town of Morong. It was too dangerous a place (what if there were an earthquake, which provoked a meltdown?), so the government never even got to start up the operation.

We were reminded of this terrible scam when a highly-reliable informant revealed that Herminio Disini, the head of the influential Herdis Group of Companies, which once cornered many of the multimillion-dollar contracts of the Marcos dictatorship, is back in town. If so, how was Disini able to sneak in unrecognized?

Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo, while ordered by the Supreme Court to prosecute the elusive Mr. Disini for "crimes" of bribery and corruption of public officials pertaining to the Westinghouse Bataan nuclear plant, said he is trying to figure out how the Ombudsman’s office can prosecute Disini when this fellow wasn’t a government official. Well, the Ombudsman might do well to resolve that issue in his own mind pronto – and locate Mr. Disini as well – otherwise he’ll get away again. Unless Disini is prosecuted, his triumphant "homecoming" from his comfortable bolthole in Austria where he allegedly acquired a chateau, and even the honorific title of "Count" (not Dracula, surely), might disprove the dictum that "crime does not pay".

For it paid him handsomely. And he managed to escape before EDSA People Power I erupted, and the Marcos hegemony was toppled.

Reversing a ruling of former Ombudsman Aniano Desierto which had absolved Disini, the Supreme Court – speaking through Justice Artemio V. Panganiban – could not help expressing indignation over the Desierto absolution. The High Court declared: "Indeed, the Bataan nuclear plant is a monumental, billion-dollar, non-performing white elephant, which our impoverished people are still paying for even if they have not benefited from it at all. Justice is overdue. Let those who appear responsible for this humongous mess be brought to account for their participation. Let justice be done!"

Sus, what a life! Disini, if my informant is correct, has had the check to waltz back into the country he defrauded. Perhaps he’s right to believe that, in our weak, not strong Republic, there’s no retribution. Judging from the many crooks in high places who’ve gotten away with their crimes, it’s time we got started on a campaign to prove him wrong.

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President GMA is flying off to Kuala Lumpur this Sunday to join 115 other member-states of the Non-Aligned Movement". The NAM is supposed, in that Malaysian shindig, to discuss the world’s concern over the Middle East crisis and the face-off between the United States and its "coalition of the willing", and Iraq.

But how can the Philippines belong to the "Non-Aligned Movement" (NAM)? Aren’t we aligned with the US? Or mis-aligned? Or what?

Oh, well, the Non-Aligned Movement which has for decades been a speech-making society sprang from the Asia-Africa Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955. Among those who were most prominent at that original meeting were our Foreign Secretary, Ambassador Carlos P. Romulo, India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Indonesia’s President Sukarno, of course – and China’s late Premier Zhou Enlai. I remember that when we met in 1964 for a two-and-a-half-hour interview in the Fujian Room of Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, the dynamic and very articulate Zhou reminded me to please give his warmest regards to his friend, General Romulo, whom he had met in Bandung.

Since Cuba’s Fidel Castro, along with Sukarno and Nehru, were for years leading lights of the "Non—Aligned Movement", I always wondered how many states were members who were "non-aligned" against the United States.

Oh, well. This is a world turned topsy-turvy. At yesterday’s European Union summit in Brussels, the presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers of the 15 EU member-states tried to paper over their really serious differences over what to do with Iraq by issuing a motherhood statement to the effect that Saddam Hussein and Baghdad must "disarm". That’s well and good. But no deadline was given for Saddam to comply by the EU states, which meant that their joint undertaking carried nothing new.

On the other hand, the 10 "new" states poised to join the European Union next May, some of which are also queueing up for North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership, were allowed to say something in the closing ceremonies. Alas, more than a few of them – particularly former Warsaw Pact and Soviet Bloc members – made noises about siding with the US. This apparently enraged French President Jacques Chirac, who went to the podium to castigate the offending countries’ views as "infantile" and pronounced them guilty of "irresponsible behavior".

Chirac even went so far as to warn Romania and Bulgaria that their statements might place their anticipated entry into the European Union in jeopardy. What, he warned, if a referendum in France had French voters opposing the entry of Romania and Bulgaria? Sanamagan. Chirac, who’s nicknamed "The Bulldozer" in Paris, even let it drop that if the US (and Britain) tried to secure a second United Nations Security Council resolution approving an attack on Iraq, France would use its veto to thwart it. Sacre bleu! Is this true? Quelle domage!

The French President’s loss of temper belied his recent attempt, in a snap interview given Time magazine to pour oil on troubled waters (oops, I guess "oil" is the wrong term to use) by telling the interviewer how much he really "liked" the US – why (crooned Chirac) he even ate "junk food". He had remarked that it saddened him to be dubbed as anti-American.

However, Chirac’s very Gaullist outburst in Brussels blew that façade of reconciliation to kingdom come. Which brings me back to my accustomed conclusion: Scratch a Frenchman and you’ll find an anti-American. The last pro-American Frenchman, in my book, was the Marquis de Lafayette – in 1776.

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The Americans, in reaction, have been saying nasty things about the French. Perhaps they’ll even boycott "French fries" in MacDonald’s, and concentrate on egg McMuffin. According to Felicia R. Lee of The New York Times, Dennis Miller quipped on the talk show of Phil Donahue the other day that the only way the French are going into Iraq is "if we tell them we found truffles in there".

In US Congress, of course, there was some wild talk about boycotting the Paris Air Show – what next? Boycott the Lido and Moulin Rouge? If the latter happened, I’d say that war is hell!

On the Internet and late-night talk shows, there are vitriolic jokes being essayed: such as – Question: "What is the difference between Frenchman and toast?" Answer: "You can make soldiers out of toast."

Question: "What do you call 10,000 Frenchmen with their arms up! Answer: "An Army."

Jay Leno in his The Tonight Show remarked: "Well, it looks like we moved a step closer to war. Not with Iraq – with France and Germany."

Saddam, possibly, has already won a victory – accomplishing something the once-powerful Soviet Union never achieved in the half-century of the Cold War. NATO is in tatters, and the Trans-Atlantic Alliance is in shambles.

As for the jokes against the French, it’s surely painful for Americans to have to send such jibes across the ocean. For Americans have always loved Paris, quaffed champagne and cognac as reminders of the "good life", adored the Can-Can, l’amour and everything French. Oh, well. Back to Jack Daniels, Miller’s, and Bud’s, I guess.

There goes the $30-billion annual trade of US and France.